Italy

SPAXS, an Italian company set up to buy a bank and develop it into an online lender focusing on small businesses, has short-listed five small Italian banks, the new firm said on Thursday. Veteran banker Corrado Passera and Andrea Clamer, former head of the non-performing loan division of IFIS, showed there is investor demand for Italian financial assets by raising 600 million euros in an IPO of SPAXS, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Last year, the coming Italian election in March was seen by some as having the potential to split apart the eurozone. Now, with just five weeks to go, not so much, The Wall Street Journal reported. Many Italian assets have rallied and outperformed European peers, thanks in part to the country’s expanding economy and shrinking unemployment. In addition, the perceived threat from antiestablishment politicians has eased. All of which has soothed investor concern as the vote approaches, a trend that isn’t uncommon to elections in the country.

Shares in Monte dei Paschi di Siena rose more than 5 per cent after the boutique fund Quaestio bought a chunk of bad loans from the bank for around €800m. Milan-based Quaestio said it had bought around 95 per cent of a tranche of €25bn non-performing loans from Monte Paschi, the Financial Times reported. The Tuscan bank is 68 per cent owned by the Italian Treasury, after a government-backed rescue last year.

One of the world's most famous hat makers, Borsalino, whose stylish fedoras and straw panamas are popular with movie stars and celebrities, faces liquidation after a rescue plan was rejected by an Italian court on Monday, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. A judge in the northern town of Alessandria, where the luxury hat maker was founded 160 years ago, refused a request for court protection from creditors, who are owed some 18 million euros ($21 million), a local trade union leader told Reuters. "It's dramatic if a solution is not found.

A manager at the center of investigations into an accounting scandal at British Telecom’s Italian business has been awarded almost 1.8 million euros ($2.1 million) in damages for wrongful dismissal, three legal sources said on Wednesday. Gianluca Cimini was fired for disciplinary reasons last year, months before the phone company filed a criminal complaint accusing him of grave violations of corporate governance, Reuters reported. The accusations arose from its investigation of alleged accounting fraud that cost the firm 530 million pounds ($690 million).

The answer to cleaning up bad loans still weighing down Italian banks may lie in a controversial proposal that would allow lenders to sell their debt at deep discounts without being forced to hold more capital, Bloomberg News reported. European Parliament lawmaker Peter Simon, who’s leading the assembly’s work on updating prudential rules for the region’s banks, wants to make it easier to sell debt cheaply without having to adjust a calculation known as loss given default, which typically hurts banks’ capital ratios.

A complex scheme Italy conceived to help the country's banks offload their bad loans seems ready at last to deliver on its potential, as the lenders fight their way through a mass of practical problems, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The "GACS" state guarantee scheme, aimed at easing a major concern hanging over the Italian economy, has had a long gestation. European authorities approved the plan almost two years ago, and one senior banker has compared the drawn-out task of preparing debt sales under its rules with childbirth.

Banca Carige SpA reached agreement with a group of banks to underwrite a share sale of about 500 million euros ($590 million) after key investors pledged their support, allowing the lender to proceed with its restructuring plan, Bloomberg News reported. Malacalza Investimenti, Carige’s main investor, agreed to buy 17.6 percent of the stock, while the second-biggest shareholder Gabriele Volpi agreed to oversubscribe to the offer, increasing his stake to 9.9 percent from 6 percent, the Genoa-based lender said in a statement early Saturday.

Growth in Italy’s services sector cooled to a one-year low in October as domestic demand struggled, a survey published on Monday showed. The Italian service sector still expanded in October according to the IHS Markit Italy services purchasing managers’ index — the third month in a row that activity has slowed, the Financial Times reported. But the index dropped to a one-year low of 52.1, down from September’s 53.2 and below analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll of a 53.0 reading.

Monte dei Paschi di Siena shares soared on their market return after a 10-month hiatus, but remained well below the price Italy paid to bail out its fourth-largest bank, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The world's oldest bank's shares last traded in Milan in December 2016 when Monte dei Paschi had to turn to Rome for help after failing to find buyers for a 5 billion euro (£4.4 billion) share issue needed to keep it afloat.